Essay on "Bible Biblical Understanding of God"

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If we understand God as holy, then we should look again to the original meaning of words. Holy in Greek has the meaning of something that is set apart and sacred. This meaning combined with the first one gives us a sense of God as unified and in this unity set apart from human understanding and nature.

If God is spirit, then he is connected to the Greek word for breath and wind. The wind is like God because both are invisible and therefore mysterious. It is something we can feel but not see, something that is sometimes present and therefore unpredictable. And it always returns to our lives.

If God is light, then God is linked to the Greek word phos. This suggests that God is seen a pure. This can be seen as a synonym for holiness, a different way of underscoring that God is separate from humans because of his holiness that is undivided, that is pervasive and enduring. God as light is consonant with ancient definitions of God, pagan definitions of God in which the sun, the moon, and the stars were seen as emblems and symbols of the cusp between the divine and the human. There is nothing of apostasy in linking the Jewish and Christian God with older understandings of the divine. God is light is the most ancient of the references in the Bible to the nature of the Biblical God.

Finally, if God is love, then God is connected to humanity, a condition that links God to all of humanity. He is apart from his creations because he is the Creator and so stands above all humans. But he is also eternally linked to humanity because it is his love that has created everything on earth.

Question Two

A diachronic approach consists of an examination of a particular thing or phenomenon as it changes over time and across place and history.… READ MORE